Two and a half million users register every day for the encrypted messaging service. Co-founder Pavel Durov says it should cross the billion mark within a year.
Head office is in Dubai, where it has sheltered itself from state moderation rules. It has positioned itself against the tide of American platforms, criticized for their commercial exploitation of personal data. The service is sometimes accused of increasing the viral potential of false information and the proliferation of hateful, neo-Nazi, pedophile, conspiratorial, or terrorist content. The platform now claims to have nearly 900 million users, according to Durorv and his brother Nikolai, who are also co-founders of the app, in a rare video interview with U.S. journalist Tucker Carlson. The company has committed to never revealing information about its users.